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The Absence Of The Loved by Wade Stevenson

These 103 poems explore grief, loneliness, thoughts and memories arising from lost love. As he’s done in previous collections, Stevenson (Moon Talk, 2016) pays close attention to the particularities of losing a beloved, finding a range of images to portray each gradation of feeling. “The most beautiful body is the absent one / The most beautiful night is the absent sun.” Stevenson offers some striking and effective images for romantic love… These poems effectively convey heartbreak’s anguish.”

—- Kirkus Reviews

Left. There is the absence There is the wound the shock, the rage, the disbelief and the grief and more for the sinking, suffering heart. In these poems, Wade Stevenson realistically surrounds the departed love with his private raw emotions and with the most wonderful metaphors, fantastic in fact, and with them the poet in his craft knits his hurt into poetry.

— Michael Basinski

Many poems and poetry collections focus on the presence of love, but “The Absence Of The Loved” is about that aftermath where love is gone, poetically describing the void left behind, and what happens when transformation and change confront a relationship: “This morning we were born for something else.” However, this book is not just about loss. In the end, the poet transfigures his loss into a vibrant, radiant presence. The young woman that he loved becomes a symbol for “the loved.” In the gorgeous final poem, “You and You Again,” the circle is closed, there is no more absence — what remains is Amor.

— D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“Stevenson’s poems, sometimes tender, sometimes an unnerving evisceration of the heart, explore the cost of loving too deeply, the things one loses to love, and the parts that are left to him when that love has vanished. “The Absence Of The Loved” is both love lost and love redeemed. Tissue required.”